A Website for Five People

About

Around a long table are seated several frantic fellows in suits, poring over thick pamphlets of facts, figures, and financial projections.

Fellow #1: So, have you figured out a way to make people read things on the internet? We know it’s hard, because reading isn’t really seen as exciting technology, even though it is the original.

Across the table, another fellow knocks back seven glasses of brandy and rises to his feet.

Fellow #2: Well, pivoting to video is a glittering lure, but there’s the rare occasion when the public can be engaged merely by words — that is, if they have a sentimental bond with the words.

The first fellow, who has been smoking five cigarettes simultaneously, pauses.

Fellow #1: So? What are you proposing?

Fellow #2 gives the boardroom a roguish grin.

Fellow #2: The Niche: it’s delicate, but potent. In Old French, nicher literally means “to make a nest.” It’s a cozy place in your heart far more familiar than anywhere you might fly. It holds, at most, five people. It’s not a vast network; it’s a nest. It’s a place… where we know… we are loved.

The boardroom erupts in applause. Every fellow seated around the table is weeping.

Fellow #1: That was beautif–

Fellow #2: It’s a place where Robert Sean Leonard is the Pope. It’s a place where Stuart Little not only has two gay dads, but is gay himself. It’s a place where Mitt Romney’s monogrammed jacket mysteriously goes missing during the Sundance Film Festival. It’s a place where —

Fellow #1: What the hell is he talking about?

Fellow #2: — a place where all fictional mice are gay, but not all gay mice are fictional. A place where —